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>> Evacuations are under way in the besieged Damascus district of Barzeh, allowing rebels to flee the area under a deal struck with the Syrian government. Video posted online said to show some of the hundreds of fighters and their families arriving in rebel-held Idlib province in the northwest, after evacuating by bus.

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Many more people, young and old, expected to leave this week, according to the Syrian Observatory For Human Rights.>>

FOREIGN]

> Such evacuations, as well as so called reconciliation deals for rebel-held areas that surrender to the government, have been promoted by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad as a way of reducing the bloodshed. But the United Nations has criticized both the seige tactics leading up to it and the evacuations themselves as amounting to forcible displacement.

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Barzeh, at the northeast edge of Damascus, has been the site of intense fighting in recent months as the civil war shows little sign of ending.